“In your country, excellency; but here they are as common as they are in Greece.”
“But the law, sir, the law!” cried Mr Burne. “Confound the scoundrels! where are the police?”
Yussuf shrugged his shoulders.
“We are far beyond the reach of the law or the police, excellency, unless a little army of soldiers is sent to take or destroy these people; and even then what can they do in these terrible fastnesses, where the brigands have hiding-places and strongholds that cannot be found out, or if found, where they can set the soldiery at defiance?”
Mr Burne blew his nose again fearfully, and created a series of echoes that sounded as if old men were blowing their noses from where they stood right away to Constantinople, so strangely the sounds died away in the distance.
“Then why, sir, in the name of common sense and common law, did you bring us into this out-of-the-way place, among these dirty, ragged, unshaven scoundrels? It is abominable! It is disgraceful! It is—”
“Hush! hush! Burne; be reasonable,” said the professor. “Yussuf has only obeyed orders. If anyone is to blame it is I, for I wished to see this ruined fastness of the old Roman days.”
Yussuf smiled, and gave the professor a grateful look.
“Humph! It’s all very well for you to take his part. He ought to have known,” grumbled the old lawyer.
“Travellers are never free from risk in any of the out-of-the-way parts of the country,” said Yussuf quietly.